Mental Health on the Gulf Coast…the numbers keep coming…

Tony don't live here

A new survey, conducted between July 19th and 25th by the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia found what most have suspected, confirming the results of the Ochsner survey released last week… people in the Gulf Coast are feeling it. When your livelihoods, culture and earning potentials are taken away or reduced…when your overall quality of life is severely impacted to the point of survival…anxiety is the rule of the day.

Some of the key findings of the study, which included 1,200 coastal residents in Louisiana and Mississippi, with a particular focus on children:

Over 40% of the population living within 10 miles of the coast had experienced some direct exposure to the oil spill.

Over one-third of parents reported that their children had experienced either physical symptoms or mental health distress due to the spill.

One in five households had seen their income decrease as a result of the spill. 8% have lost jobs—and only 5% of coastal residents reported receiving cash or gift cards from BP.

Over one-quarter of the coastal residents think they may have to move form the area because of the spill.

The poor were hit the most—coastal households earning less than $25,000 a year were more likely to report having lost income than those earning more, more likely to think they would have to move and more likely to report physical and mental health effects among their children.

The finding that strikes me the most here is that 25% of the people surveyed feel they may have to leave the Gulf Coast as a result of the spill. Twenty-Five Percent! It’s outrageous that one-quarter of Gulf Coast residents have had their day-to-day lives so impacted they feel they might have to uproot themselves, their kids…leave neighbors, relatives, schools, friends, meeting places, the water, the parks, the things they know…everything they’ve known as home.

Leave it all because of British Petroleum’s catastraphuk.

And still, to this day…BP’s contribution towards mental health treatment in the Gulf?

Nothing.

Neither BP or Kenneth Feinberg will commit to paying a dime. After all…mental health is not covered under the oil pollution act of 1990.

How many British Petroleum executives have had to leave what they know behind?

Tony Hayward?

Well, at least he got millions of dollars to do it and a nice new job where he can make more in a month than those in this survey who are forced to move can make in a year, combined.